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My favourite music is the music I haven't yet heard. I don't hear the music I write: I write in order to hear the music I haven't yet heard.

John Cage

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John Cage
Age: 79 †
Born: 1912
Born: September 5
Died: 1992
Died: August 2
Composer
Illustrator
Music Theorist
Musician
Musicologist
Painter
Philosopher
Poet
University Teacher
Writer
LA
California
John Milton Cage Jr.
John Milton Cage
Jr.
John Milton
Jr. Cage
J. C.
Music
Writing
Favourite
Havens
Haven
Hear
Heard
Write
Order

More quotes by John Cage

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Which is more musical: a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school?
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As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency.
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What right do I have to be in the woods, if the woods are not in me.
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My work became an exploration of non-intention.
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There was a German philosopher who is very well known, his name was Immanuel Kant, and he said there are two things that don’t have to mean anything, one is music and the other is laughter. Don’t have to mean anything that is, in order to give us deep pleasure.
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The world is teeming anything can happen.
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So somebody has talent? So what? Dime a dozen. And we're overpopulated. Actually we have more food than we have people and more art. We've gotten to the point of burning food. When will we begin to burn our art?
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It's useless to play lullabies for those who cannot sleep.
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The responsibility of the artist consists in perfecting his work so that it may become attractively disinteresting.
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...we make our lives by what we love.
John Cage
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Our intention is to affirm this life, not to bring order out of chaos, nor to suggest improvements in creation, but simply to wake up to the very life we're living, which is so excellent once one gets one's mind and desires out of its way and lets it act of it's own accord.
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No one can have an idea once he starts really listening.
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It is not futile to do what we do. We wake up with energy and we do something. And we make, of course, failures and we make mistakes, but we sometimes get glimpses of what we might do next.
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People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is.
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Each moment presents what happens.
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I want to change my way of seeing, NOT my way of feeling. I was perfectly happy about my feelings.
John Cage
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As McLuhan says, everything happens at once.
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All God's religions ... have not been able to put mankind back together again.
John Cage
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Music is edifying, for from time to time it sets the soul in operation.
John Cage
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In an utter emptiness anything can take place.
John Cage